Boston police officers named Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, as the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, dispelling rumors that former member of the class of 2012 Sunil Tripathi was a suspect.
Tripathi’s family members and University officials confirmed he was not a considered suspect Friday morning.
Widespread Internet discussion and multiple media outlets claimed Thursday evening and early Friday morning that Tripathi’s name was heard on police scanners as one of two suspects in Monday’s bombings.
“The last 18 hours have generated tremendous and painful attention — on social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, as well as from television media inquiries — linking Sunil to the video stills released by the FBI yesterday afternoon,” Tripathi’s family wrote in a statement Friday.
“Reports that (Tripathi) was a possible suspect in the Boston Marathon investigation were untrue, and there is no connection between him and the events in Boston,” wrote Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, executive vice president for planning and policy, and Margaret Klawunn, vice president for campus life and student services, in a community-wide email Friday.
“Our thoughts are with the Tripathi family who have had to endure additional pain due to unfounded and irresponsible Internet rumors,” they wrote.
Rumors that Tripathi was associated with the bombings circulated Thursday on multiple social networking websites, including Facebook, Reddit and Twitter, where a high school classmate of Tripathi’s posted FBI stills and pictures of Tripathi, suggesting resemblance. Comments alluding to the rumors surfaced on the Facebook page the family has devoted to searching for Tripathi, and family members disabled the page until early Friday morning.
Family members reached out to law enforcement officers when traffic started “picking up” on the Facebook page, said brother Ravi Tripathi ’09. “Various levels of law enforcement” stayed in touch with the family throughout the night, he added.
“At no point did it appear to anyone that Sunil was involved in any way,” he said.
University officials, including Klawunn and University Chaplain Janet Cooper Nelson, also contacted the family Thursday night, Ravi Tripathi said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed during a confrontation with police early Friday morning following a shooting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a shooting and bomb scare in Watertown, Mass. His brother, Dzhokhar, is still at large.
Family members will continue searching for Tripathi, who went missing March 16, mother Judy Tripathi said. They hope to “use as much of this energy and buzz that has been created to help us in our search for Sunil,” she said. “We’re still as actively as ever looking.”